If you’re tired of the appraised value on your home going up, causing you to pay more and more in property taxes every year, I’ve got a solution to stop that from happening.

Buy a commercial property in Douglas County.

That’s right buy a commercial property and once they set a value on it you may never have a tax increase due to a higher evaluation ever again.

Don’t believe me?

The First National bank building downtown is appraised at 126,000,000. That’s the same appraisal value it’s had since 2021. The appraised value did go up 8/10ths of 1% from 2020-2021

Is that an outlier? Hardly!

The current Mutual of Omaha building has been appraised at 32,500,000 for the last four years. It went up from 32,000,000 in 2021. A mere fraction of what most of our property taxes have gone up since then.

Mutual owns the Twin Tower Condominiums at 33rd and Farnam streets. That appraised value has gone up rather substantially from five years ago, but so have the property values of the individual condos and the people living there.

Union Pacific owns numerous vacant plots of commercial real estate. Most with stagnant low appraised values and some may be tax deferred all together depending on its use.

The appraised value of the HDR corporate headquarters in AkSarBen Village actually went down a little from 77,575,600 in 2021 to 77,244,000

I could point out more flat appraised values, but you get the point.

I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not picking on these corporations. These companies bring jobs and add value to the community. But is Douglas County leaving money on the table? Could that money help reduce our residential property taxes or at least stabilize them for a while?

Now I know that it is harder to appraise these commercial buildings because they are unique and there aren’t any similar buildings to compare them to. In residential appraisals they can look at what the other houses in the neighborhood sold for and attach that value on your house.

But since there is no comparable sale of a property like the Mutual of Omaha building or First National Bank headquarters, they just stuck a value on it and have kept it there for years. A value that is far less than what it would be worth if they were to sell, or cost to rebuild.

So what should be done?

The County Board should take a good hard look at the current situation and come up with a formula that’s fair to the corporations and county alike. Perhaps something so simple as attaching it to the rate of inflation or a set small percentage increase every year.

I’ve been told that raising the values of these properties will help the developers pay off their TIF funds faster. And while it would add tax revenue to the county, it could also increase the rental price of the companies leasing office space.

Nobody likes paying taxes, and property taxes in Nebraska are especially high. But if we have to pay taxes, don’t you think they should be on a more equitable footing?

There are no easy solutions to this problem, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but the powers that be can’t just put their head in the sand and hope nobody notices.

Because people are starting to notice.

It’s time for the county assessor to take a serious look at these buildings and give them a fair assessment. Either that or give the homeowners the same benefit and stop raising our property values to increase our property taxes year after year.

Tom Becka is a long time Nebraska broadcaster who for over 30 years has been covering Omaha and Midwest issues on both radio and TV. He has been a guest on numerous national cable and news shows, filled in for nationally syndicated talk radio programs and Talkers Magazine has recognized him as one of the Top 100 talk show hosts in the country 10 times. Never afraid to ruffle some feathers, his ‘Becka’s Beat’ commentaries can be found online on Youtube and other digital platforms.

Opinions expressed by columnists in The Daily Record are not necessarily those of its management or staff, and do not constitute an endorsement or recommendation. Any errors or omissions should be called to our attention so that they may be corrected. Contact us at news@omahadailyrecord.com.